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Valley: If you’re tense, you just can’t do it. Everything is slowed down. Korn: “We talk about being in turbo mode, and we take those skills, and the adrenaline allows you to be faster, not slower. Your adrenaline needs to be an asset, not your kryptonite. That’s why you see great guys have great games at great moments. They embrace the moment and love being on stage. Maybe it’s a degree of ego. I said before that Dom loved being on stage, and we’ve all heard the stories of different goalies’ egos. They love being the center of attention and the focal point. As long as it’s managed well, if that’s what drives their engine, go for it. It makes them better and the team better. As long as they don’t stand up when it’s over and say, “me, me, it’s me, I’m awesome!” But if they can use it internally to help them be better, so be it. We all have a little ego in there. Great goalies want to make a significant and positive difference every time they play. We’re both goalie coaches. What do we want to do? We want to make a significant difference every time we coach. That’s why we’ve done it for a long time. That’s what great goalies do, they can sustain it, and they make a significant difference every time they play.” Valley: I look at Richard Bachman. He is probably one of the most mentally tough goalies I’ve ever met in my life and ever seen. You look at the things he’s had to overcome; he’s a smaller goalie, and there are so many things he’s had to overcome in his life to get to where he is now. Korn: “He found mechanisms to overcome the weaknesses. If you were blind, what improves? Your hearing and your other senses. There are compensations being made. So in his case, he reads the play unbelievably well. He’s quick as a cat, he’s tough as nails and he has become tough because he was probably told a thousand times while growing up that he’s not going to make it.” Valley: One of the ways he approaches each NHL game, he never has any fear or anxiety. He’s relaxed, composed, and he looks at every day as a great opportunity. We’re playing a meaningless game against the Blues last season and they’re trying to capture the President’s Trophy so they have a good lineup. We played a bunch of our younger guys, but he looked at the rosters and said, “Gosh this is a great opportunity.” Or the very first time he got called up, he was called into Chicago and although he wasn’t playing, I went up to him and said, “Hey, you ready to go tonight?” and he said, “Absolutely. I’m always ready, I’m excited.” So he never has that fear or that pit in his stomach that he might get embarrassed. He embraces each opportunity as if it’s a chance to grow or show that he can play in the NHL. Fear just doesn’t enter the equation. Korn: “Attitude determines altitude. He doesn’t get paralyzed and that’s his mechanism. There are guys that are bigger or more skilled that might possess some of the negatives, but they can survive on their skills and size. But they’ll never be great until they get the mental part in order.” Valley: He never lets a tough practice or a bad goal affect him. It goes back to what we said earlier, he’s just in the moment and he plays and doesn’t let his anxiousness or fear or lack of controlling his emotions drown him. Korn: “Our coach in Nashville has a great saying. He says, “There are a lot of players who get in their own way because they talk themselves out of stuff, or because they are angry at something, and they let it get in their way. If they have issues outside of the rink, that gets in their way. The best guys are able to turn everything and all the anxiety and distractions off, and just play the game when it’s time to play the game.” Valley: How do you prevent anxiety when you see a young guy getting anxious or over-trying? Korn: “When you over-try, the game goes too fast, and you’re unable to keep up. That’s the beauty of sports psychologists and that’s why we’re lucky for the business we’re in that we have access to those kinds of people. They have a variety of strategies, from breathing to imagery, to try and help give these guys strategies. Even in-game ones like water on your face, rebooting the computer, and finding what works for you. I know a goalie that would actually put his girlfriend’s perfume on the cuff of his wristband, and he would take the catching glove off and smell it to help him re-focus in games because it was a calming effect for him. It sounds bizarre, but that was a recommendation of a high-level sports psych guy. That was one of the strategies this guy used to help the goalie calm down in the game. The disadvantage was that you needed a whistle to do it, because you couldn’t do it while things were going on. I think by the time a guy gets to you or me, they’ve weeded themselves out, and they haven’t gotten that far. Even at the minor hockey level, they get weeded out, or they quit playing because it’s not fun or comfortable or enjoyable. So we’re lucky, we get the cream of the crop, and some of the issues that might occur are issues goalies may grow into them, not grow out of them, as the stakes increase.” Valley: Why do goaltenders get better with age? Korn: “Patterns. It’s a game of experience. But if you break down the save process, what matters is how quickly you make the decisions, and how right you are in making those decisions by recognizing the situation and the patterns. As we age, we all mellow, and that little bit of mellowing out is a good thing in goal. Don’t get me wrong, we need adrenaline. But we also need to be able to slow things down. We talk about patterns, we talk about patience, and as we get more experience we recognize them faster and gain more composure. We know what’s coming and we see it over and over again.” Valley: Why do some guys play their best when they are sick? Korn: “Because they’re far more focused and they bear down. You subconsciously say that you’re not healthy, you don’t want to get embarrassed, so I better crank it up. I never played pro hockey, but I can tell you as a youngster, I too played my best games sick. It just seems that you conserve energy, and that’s probably more important than anything. You’re not wasting energy on things you can’t control, and you’re ultra-focused because you know you have to be, because things aren’t feeling perfect.” Valley: Last question. You get to say one thing to a goalie before he goes out on the ice for a big game. What do you say? Korn: “Oh wow. You know what? I think it depends on the goalie. If we’re good goalie coaches, we know what buttons to push. I’ve coached guys where it would probably make sense to say, “If you win tonight, your next contract will be worth at least $2 million more.” And to him, that would be the most ultimate motivating factor. But I would never say that to a different guy that isn’t motivated by money. So I think it’s based on the guy, but in general, if I had to come up with a closing statement for the readers, I would say: enjoy it, embrace it. This will be a blast!”